Conservatives are playing all their greatest hits these days:
The Constitution gives control over spending to Congress, but Trump and his aides maintain that the president should have much more discretion — including the authority to cease programs altogether, even if lawmakers fund them. Depending on the response from the Supreme Court and Congress, Trump’s plans could upend the balance of power between the three branches of the federal government.
Sigh. This is the "impoundment" debate all over again. It's ridiculous. Both Congress and the Supreme Court banned impoundment 50 years ago,¹ and even before then it was used only for relatively minor cuts. Every president since Nixon has wanted the impoundment power back, and every Congress since Nixon has refused to grant it.
That's not going to change, and even Trump's pets on the Supreme Court are unlikely to restore the impoundment power in any broad way. The Constitution is simply too clear about budgeting power belonging to Congress.
Trump can blather all he wants, but he doesn't get to unilaterally slash programs approved by Congress and signed by.......himself. This is just red meat for the rubes.
¹In fact, July 12 marks the 50th anniversary of the Impoundment Control Act.
The Supreme Court won't do X because....
Are you serious?
There are still some (R) Senators who would balk at this, so I think you're overall-correct. But I think this is much more fragile than you're allowing.
Throw 20 more Boeberts into the House and you've got it there. And replace a couple more on SCOTUS and you've got it there.
This is something I can see Trump fixating on because in his eyes it would become 'his' power that was 'unfairly' taken away.
Line item VETO!!!
Which was declared unconstitutional in Clinton v. City of New York in 1998.
Trum will be a dictator. He will either ignore the Congress, or harrass them to do what he wants, whatever he will find easier. The idea that he will actaully do what Congress decides is ridiculous.
Talking as if Trump will govern as a democractic president according to the constitution and the laws is nonsense, and make it easier for Trump to hide his actual intentions. You should all stop it.
It's highly likely that either the House or Senate will be in GOP hands into the near future, so impeachment is off the table. There are enough Trump judges that it's likely that any lawsuit could getted bogged down for years. Even if the Supreme Court would rule against Trump, it woukd have to get there first, and then be enforced second.
This is wrong too.
Once trump is president he has enough ability to harrass law-makers and judges, he will use it and will not need any voluntary cooperation from them. So the questions of majorities in Congress and which judges make decisions are irrelevant.
He’s basically stating upfront that he will refuse to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.
And the Republican Party is delighted.
They’re no longer the Party of Lincoln—more like the Party of Caligula.
I expect Trump’s next nomination to the Supreme Court will be a horse. (Could a horse be worse than Alito?)
How'd that work out for Roe v Wade?
You have much more faith in SCOTUS than I do and I think the GOP legislators would be glad to hand him that power if it excluded defense spending, Medicare and Social Security. Maybe some other spending they like.
Steve
Trump is actually pro medicare and social security whereas traditional conservatives want to gut those programs.
If Republicans sent him a bill to slash both Medicare and Social Security, Trump would sign it in an instant.
This presupposes that Trump will respect Supreme Court judgements he does not like. Methinks this is naive.
It's insane to me whenever any President ever asks for this.
Literally the most important thing a President has to do is faithfully execute the laws. That's the job! Those laws are made by Congress. Most of the Presidents job is working for Congress. Doing their will.
This is basically always a President saying "I don't want to do my job" whenever it comes up. Congress already grants the executive branch broad latitude into HOW to execute the laws; that's common and necessary. But this is just ridiculous.
We had an oral argument before SCOTUS in which the court as a whole seemed to think it was a hard question whether or not and to which degree the president was kinglike and therefore immune from the law. Trump's attorney in open court bold-facedly stated that the president could assassinate somebody, and that was within the president's purview and immune from prosecution. And it seemed like at least some of the justices were on said attorney's side.
It's important to note that there is a 6-3 conservative majority on the court, and that the last time we had that was a century ago, when the court was striking down minimum wage and child labor laws as unconstitutional infringements on the free association rights of employers and employees to contract. We're in for a wild and crazy ride, and anybody (like, unfortunately, Kevin) pointing to recent history as a reason this Court will or will not do a thing, isn't aware of how crazy a world we now live in.
Think of it this way: if the Republicans had 66 seats in the Senate and similarly 2/3 of the House, it would be foolish to argue that they'd never ban contraception or make flag burning illegal or pass a law against birthright citizenship etc. on the theory that the've tried that for years and it's never stuck. The power conditions now are fundamentally skewed from the baseline, so baseline history isn't helpful for predictions.
Some history: https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/10/richard-nixon-congressional-budget-control-act-history-000282/
" and every Congress since Nixon has refused to grant it." that's not true. Congress under gingrich gave clinton that power through the line item veto but the supreme court ruled that was unconstitutional.
Sure he will. As long as he confers with conservatives (especially rich business owners who own SCOTUS), they will not just acquiesce, but pave the way to unilateral cuts to select departments. EPA, dead. Get ready for the unilateral privatization of public lands, including the parks. Say goodbye to the civil rights division at DOJ.
"Say goodbye to the civil rights division at DOJ."
The name will stay. It is the functionality that will change, to protect Trumpists that attacked anybody that doesn't obey him.
Well, obviously. But when he's king?